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The first concert I ever attended (at least that I remember) was when my parents took this eighth grader to see Bobby McFerrin at the much-vaunted Holidome in Crown Point, Indiana. Just take a moment and let that sentence settle in … and try to contain your envy. Yes, some kids in the late 80s went to see Madonna or Aerosmith or MC Hammer or New Kids on the Block, but for me it was Bobby McFerrin all the way. And this was before “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” So there.

The show was in the round, with just McFerrin and maybe a piano. I can’t recall. But with his phenomenal, otherworldly musicality, he rattled (largely acapella) through two hours of amazing numbers, not to mention his complete re-creation of the entire film The Wizard of Oz, including that iconic “I’m melting!” bit.

Flash forward, nearly 30 years (sigh), and I find myself yet again riding along in the backseat of my parents’ car, on our way to see another Baby Boomer mainstay Randy Newman, this time in Indianapolis. Nothing takes you back to the feeling of being a child like riding in the backseat of your parents’ car on a long car trip – that intoxicating mix of comfort and powerlessness as you cruise down the road listening to the squabbling and the laughter, to music you don’t recognize and familial history references you do. I wouldn’t trade that feeling for anything.

Palladium

So it is with this context that we took in Newman’s concert at Carmel, Indiana’s palatial music hall, the Palladium at the Center for Performing Arts. Such a musical hall Indiana has never before seen – a concert venue that looks like it was designed by M.C. Escher, if overdosed with Benzedrine by Liberace’s hairdresser, after visiting the Palace of Versailles or Disneyland’s “Hall of Presidents.” It really is beautiful and strange, with a byzantine entrance and egress system that made me feel like I was playing Milton Bradley’s Mousetrap.

However, there isn’t a bad seat in the house (nor a reasonably priced one), with Phantom of the Opera-esque box seats at every turn, polished cherry and marble floors, phenomenal acoustics and lighting, and super-cushy chairs.

As we sat there taking in the opulence, Newman lumbered on stage, after a loving introduction by Michael Feinstein himself. You see, Feinstein, a Columbus, Ohio native, helped get the Center established five or so years ago, alongside his husband Terrence Flannery, as a permanent monument to the Great American Songbook and to our musical theater traditions. The space also houses The Great American Songbook Foundation, which is very much worth visiting if you have some time to spare before a show there. They are great about arranging tours.

Roy and Susie waiting for the big show

For over two hours, it was just Newman, his piano, and a very responsive audience. Newman isn’t quite the showman that McFerrin was/is – likely an unfair comparison since they’re such different artists, and I am judging them across a divide of 30 years. Ah well.

But what Newman lacked in showmanship, he made up in shaggy charm. He would periodically play wrong notes, stop, look up at the audience, shake his head, and say things like, “I never was a very good pianist.” Then, he would dive back into plunking out notes for many of his signature songs like “I Love L.A.,” “Short People,” “You Can Leave Your Hat On,” and “Mama Told Me Not to Come.”

A highlight for me was his performance of “Love Story (You and Me),” a Newman tune covered previously by artists as diverse as Harry Nilsson, Lena Horne, and Harry Belafonte. The song is a poignant charmer and has not aged a bit. Newman delivered it with aplomb, his frogs-and-molasses voice the perfect accent to the song’s lilting, loping melody.

Newman peppered his set-list, which pretty much seemed made up as he went along, with anecdotes about his life as a child of Los Angeles, as a child of the 60s, and as a child of a movie soundtrack dynasty (he is the nephew of acclaimed film composers Alfred and Lionel Newman and the cousin of Thomas Newman). The casual vibe he affected was on the whole delightful, though a bit more preparation and variety would have benefited the slow-going second act.

An artist of Newman’s caliber with such an accomplished history in pop, theater, and movie music is pretty much just going to do whatever the hell he wants, so that’s just fine. It is unlikely he will come this way again, so we are grateful we got the chance to see him.

Newman at piano

I never realized just how many songs the man has written about cities and/or states: Baltimore, Los Angeles, Birmingham, Louisiana. And he performed them all. They follow a similar formula, with snarky verses that alternate with hypnotic repetition of said geography’s name. He worked in a wink and a nod to his Hoosier hosts, noodling through “On the Banks of the Wabash” and “Back Home Again in Indiana,” at one point looking around the beautiful Palladium and cheekily observing, “What a dump.”

His show was riddled with his caustic takes on religion and politics, government and capitalism. That was a breath of fresh air in an otherwise conservative community, so I’m sure a few spiky letters to the editor will arrive at the Indianapolis Star this week.

Yet, if he had really wanted to drive a stake through the heartland, he should have played one of my personal favorites, his theme “That’ll Do” from Babe: Pig in the City. While originally sung by Peter Gabriel, their voices are rather interchangeable at this point, so I think Newman delivering this subtle ode to kindness and to compassion and, well, to pigs would have been the perfect punctuation mark on his performance in factory farming Indiana (sad example here). We thought about shouting the title “That’ll Do” (like some rowdy concert-goers shouted “Free Bird” when I saw Tracy Chapman at the Wabash College Chapel years ago), but then we realized he might misunderstand, think we were telling him he was done for the evening, and then walk off stage.

Newman, ever the iconoclast, also worked in his shots at corporate giant Disney, letting us know in no uncertain terms, that while he has appreciated the opportunity, he hasn’t always been thrilled with the artistic limitations imposed. In a funnier bit, he commented how frustrating it is to score something such as a toy soldier falling into a drawer, adding that there is a good 20 minutes of Toy Story he’s never seen, because that particular section didn’t require any musical scoring. He then launched into a fine rendition of “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” one of the sharpest musical moments of the evening. Again, I wouldn’t have minded hearing a slightly more obscure tune from the Toy Story saga, the beautiful and heartbreaking “When She Loved Me” (originally sung by Sarah McLachlan and written by Newman).

I guess it is a sign that I am more of a fan than I knew, having left the show enjoying what I heard but wishing for more songs than time had allowed.

Feinstein and Sexton

As a final note, we realized after the show was over, that we had been seated in a box next to Michael Feinstein and his family and some potentially uber-wealthy donors. No doubt we probably would have been a bit better behaved had we known this – not putting our feet on the backs of chairs, nor taking flash photos, nor snapping our chewing gum. We are so classy. Regardless, after he finished schmoozing Daddy Warbucks and Co., Feinstein was kind and gracious enough to take a photo with us and to chat for a bit, though I suspect the cleaning crew was dispatched to our vacated box immediately.

Do take a moment to check out Feinstein’s Foundation and the great work they’re doing there, and if you feel like sending a donation to preserve our musical history and keep art alive, I’m sure it would be appreciated. If you find yourself in Indianapolis, definitely stop by for a visit or show. It’s worth it!

Have you ever seen a concert that’s just so good that there isn’t much to say about it?

Me neither. But I did last night.

Justin Timberlake and Jay-Z’s tour-de-force concert Legends of the Summer hit Detroit’s Ford Field last night with the gale force of a hurricane. It was a marvel. And it was so good…for once I’m at a loss for words. Or at least a loss for quips.

Why? For one, there were no flying motorcycles, no gymnastic feats, no flying saucers, no aerial acts, no trapeze artists, and no horses. (Well, I will say, I thought the two live horses at Shania’s show were pretty amazing and really sweet.) There was just music and the joy of performing… though admittedly the lacquered red rectangle of a set that turned into a million different light projections was a nifty technical addition.

The D brings folks together! Surprised to find a former co-worker seated nearby [Photo by Author]

Timberlake and Jay-Z shared the stage about 70% of the time, and, reminiscent of the Rat Pack vibe that Timberlake has been rather successfully co-opting for about a half dozen years, the two swells bounced off each other musically, complementing each other’s showmanship beautifully.

Neither performer missed a beat as they sailed through nearly 40 songs in about two and a half hours. The show is briskly paced and does not bore for one second.

Timberlake, who used to suffer a bit from the “hey look what I can do now” curse of too many child performers (and of a couple of show choir show-boaters I avoided during high school), has mellowed at the ripe old age of 32 (!). He moves effortlessly from piano to keyboard to vocal to dance with finesse and surety, his former overeagerness having transitioned beautifully to a playful confidence.

Tiger stage projection during Jay-Z performance[Photo by Author]

And Jay-Z (who I think is about my age) was like the elder statesman – Martin or Sinatra to Timblerake’s Sammy? I don’t know his music as well as I do Timberlake’s and I’m not always nuts about hip hop (with the shining exception of my fascination with Kanye West) but Jay-Z made me a convert. He approached his rhymes like a jazz musician who isn’t afraid of melody. He swoops and glides and compels the audience to hang on to every word. Mesmerizing.

The show was a graduation present of sorts for our niece as she heads off to college, and I could tell that it was just the right send off. She was on cloud nine during the nearly hour-long departure from the stadium. For once, the exiting crowd was a fun extension of the evening as opposed to a burden as everyone seemed euphoric.

That big red stage…kinda looked like a Target store display [Photo by Author]

(One notable exception being the truly obnoxious inebriated Kardashian clones seated immediately behind us during the whole show. Note to future concert-goers: just because you have floor seats does not give you the right to keep pushing your chairs against the patrons in the next row. Thank goodness for the sweet folks in front of us, who, sensitive to our plight, moved their seats up to give us more room.)

Yup, kids, there’s a new Rat Pack in town and it’s led by Jay-Z and JT. They only have a few shows left this summer. Don’t miss ’em! (And lookee there…guess I did have something to say after all…and even a quip or two!)

Time plays such strange tricks with the mind. It feels like a week ago that I was in eighth grade hearing New Kids on the Block’s signature hit “Hangin’ Tough” for the first time. Or two days ago when BoyzIIMen’s “Motownphilly” rocketed across my car radio in college. Or yesterday when 98 Degrees (and an equally neophyte Christina Aguilera) contributed those requisite, catchy, and sometimes extraneous two bonus pop songs at the end of a mid-90s Disney animated musical, in this case Mulan.

Don’t even get me started on Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson’s more entertaining-than-it-had-any-right-to-be reality hit show Newlyweds…and, alas, we all know how that one turned out. They were doomed the moment Jessica feigned confusion over what “Chicken of the Sea” actually was. In her defense, it is a very odd and rather disgusting brand name if you think about it.

So last night The Package Tour with BoyzIIMen, 98 Degrees, and New Kids on the Block (now saddled with the unfortunately cumbersome, test-marketed acronym NKOTB) at the Palace of Auburn Hills was a surreal though vibrantly fun evening of music and wistful nostalgia.

BoyzIIMen [Image by author]

Neither these 40-something-year-old “boy band”-ers (wow, what a dumb genre name) nor their audience (myself included) are getting any younger. The singers still power gamely through the hits, even if the lyrics now make them (and us) wince a bit, and they move as if their knees and joints aren’t aching like heck. I found it difficult just to stand for three hours; I can’t imagine if I had been jumping from one fog-encased, hydraulic moving platform to the next.

Evening openers BoyzIIMen were the strongest vocally, singing many of their hits a cappella without one sour note, truly amazing in an arena the size of the Palace filled to the rafters with screaming fans.

Us with 98 Degrees [Image from VIP Nation]

98 Degrees were charming as well. We had the added benefit of attending a meet and greet with the group before the show. They were gracious and authentic and kind to all. I was suitably impressed by how “un-star-like” they all were. As when I saw Shania Twain in Las Vegas a few months back, sat on the front row, and bonded with now friends Mike G. and Linda and Randy K., the close proximity to celebrities created an instantaneous, good-hearted sense of community.

Us with “Super Fan” Katy from Cadillac[Image by author]

We befriended a 98 Degrees/NKOTB super-fan Katy from Cadillac, Michigan who showed us the meet-and-greet ropes. Why do I share this? As a testament to the band’s generosity of spirit, when Katy approached the table, Jeff Timmons, without missing a beat, shook her hand and said, “Hi Katy! Great to see you again! How is your son doing?” as if they were just catching up after running into each other in the produce aisle of their local grocery store.

And in performance, this audience connection carried over nicely. For about an hour, Timmons along with brothers Nick and Drew Lachey (a Dancing with the Stars champ) and sometime politician and Occupy Cincinnati activist Justin Jeffre (seriously, he was even arrested!) worked the crowd, winking at their latter day reality TV personae that have eclipsed their days as pop music icons.

NKOTB [Image by author]

The evening was efficiently produced with no delays between acts, so, when NKOTB took the stage promptly at 9 pm, the crowd was in a frenzy. Donnie Wahlberg seems to have taken his place as ringleader with all the dynamics we’ve seen in his acting (he’s actually better than brother Mark in my opinion) now on display in his musical efforts as well.

At times, it felt as if all the performers had watched Magic Mike a few too many times and had committed too much of Matthew McConaughey’s skeezy “hey ladies…” dialogue to memory. AND, minor quibble VIP Nation, but next time when folks sign up for the 98 Degrees “Meet and Greet” and you hand out the perfunctory gift bags, please have a few men’s t-shirts on hand. No matter how XXL the shirt, a woman’s tank top shirt is still a woman’s tank top shirt. And, no I’m not even using it when I do yard work.

As a sure sign that we were old and attending what was in essence an “oldies” concert, we left early. Not because we didn’t love the show. We did. But our feet were tired…and have you tried to get through that Palace traffic at the end of an evening?